The Russian hacker group, Killnet is said to have been targeting US websites. Killnet primarily targets the websites of government agencies and other organizations that offer services to the general public. In the past, it has also targeted Japan, Latvia, Norway, Lithuania, Italy, the Czech Republic, Moldova, and Romania in addition to the United States. A well-known attack was also carried out on the website of the Eurovision Song Contest 2022. Killnet, whose members self-identify as ‘hacktivists,’ has been on a rampage recently, attacking websites based in the United States.
Their most recent operation targeted websites belonging to 49 airports in the United States, successfully taking 13 of them temporarily offline. They attacked many state websites in the United States a week ago, successfully bringing down the website for Colorado for more than 24 hours and briefly disrupting the website for Kentucky.
About Killnet?
Killnet is a hacker collective that specializes in the DoS and DDoS forms of cyberattacks. These acronyms stand for “Denial of Service” and “Distributed Denial of Service,” respectively (DDOS). It is believed that they came into being some time in March 2022, following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. They openly support Russia and Vladimir Putin in their ideology.
Killnet is capable of rendering websites inoperable in both the case of DoS and DDoS attacks by preventing their intended users from accessing their services. It is accomplished by overloading the server of a website by flooding it with a large number of sessions that have been produced artificially. As a result of this flooding, the server is unable to respond to legitimate requests for service.
In the case of a DoS attack, the artificial requests come from a solitary origin, whereas in the event of a DDoS attack, the requests come from a multitude of origins that are dispersed across a number of locations throughout the world.
Attacks of the type known as DoS and DDOS do not create any kind of harm that persists over time; rather, they can result in websites going offline for anything from a few hours to many days.
The hacking attacks that come from Killnet are developed through a process of mass-sourcing. They post in advance on a Telegram group about their plans and encourage other professional and amateur hackers to participate alongside them.
Killnet was on the list of Russian-affiliated groups against which the Five Eyes intelligence alliance, which is a multilateral cyber intelligence alliance consisting of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States, issued a warning about attacks on critical infrastructure in April of 2022.
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